I have a cynical take on the prevalence of marketing in our society. This may not apply to Brave specifically, but while we're on the topic of marketing:

I wonder if growing wealthy inequality means that consumers simply don't have enough wealth to make honest exchanges worth while. The powers-that-be look for ways to "grow" and consider making an honest product and simply selling it, but the common people don't have enough wealth to give in exchange for an honest product, so instead they put their money into advertising and other "growth" efforts.

Brave may be an example of this, what if consumers simply don't have enough wealth to finance the development of an honest consumer focused browser? In that case you would expect to see companies like Brave, even if their intentions are good, turning to less honest sources of income.

Consumer focused software seems to be on the decline, and for the first time I'm wondering if this is due to large scale economic reasons.